Aimless Wandering

Ok so it’s been a bit since I’ve posted - I’ve been traveling yet again although this should be the last trip until the big one in September.

This time it was off to a “workshop” in Orlando.  It was easy to tell which of my co-workers had never been to Orlando before as their response was universally “Oh cool you’re going to Orlando!”  They just don’t understand that Florida in the summer is hot, and humid with a side of severe thunderstorms.  Now I don’t mind the thunderstorms, but the heat and humidity are horrible.

I’ve been fortunate in the past, while I’ve been through San Francisco in the past when it’s been crowded - this time around was probably my worst experience.  While I don’t like the crowds and the lines I can usually tolerate them if things keep moving.  However when there’s as many as 5 open kiosks for people to use and the folks on the line are too clueless to step to them thereby holding the entire line, that’s when the frustration starts.

Even more frustrating about the clueless passengers at the self-check in kiosks are the clueless agents manning those kiosks.  After checking myself in I had to wait close to 10 minutes before one of the agents bothered to wander down and tag my luggage.  What ticked me off was the fact that the agents were dealing with folks who were closer to them and meant they didn’t have to walk as far from the counter that they had decided to plant themselves at.

I greatly dislike passing through security at San Francisco - not that security is ever much fun to pass through, but it’s glaringly obvious that San Francisco is unable to accomodate modern security checkpoints.  Security is almost always crowded and cramped.

It seemed like a good idea at the time - my flight to Orlando was a non-stop.  Where the plan fell apart - I got in at 10PM and didn’t have a car.  As a result by the time I got my bags, caught the shuttle to the airport and got checked in it was after 11PM.  I had eaten lunch at 11:30 AM Pacific, and here it was 11:15PM Eastern and the hotel had NO dining options after 11PM.

The hotel by the way - sucked.  The A/C was one of the loudest I’ve had to live with in quite a while, and pretty ineffective too.  The bathroom was pretty nasty, the wall paper was peeling and there was mold on the ceiling.

The highlight of the trip was our outing to Kennedy Space Center.  We were treated to a private tour given to us by NASA (as opposed to one of the tours offered by the visitor’s center), and thanks to the folks at NASA we got to walk around the press observation area.  This is where the popular shot is taken that includes the flagpole, giant countdown clock with the launch pads in the background.  Even cooler we were taken over to launchpad 39B which is the launchpad that the shuttles are launched from.  The visitor’s center tours get about 3 miles from the launchpad, but we were taken right up to the perimeter fence that surrounds the launchpad.  We were within 300 feet of the pad.  That was cool.

I was also amazed by how tight security has become at Kennedy.  It wasn’t that long ago where anybody could drive around the facility and pretty much go wherever you want on your own.  Now the entire place is locked down tight, you can’t get on to the facility without a NASA issued badge.

For the most part the flight back was uneventful - until we landed, and then we sat.  We spent over an hour hanging out on the taxiways waiting for an open gate so we could get off the plane.

And what’s the deal with the airline’s practice of sticking the baggage for 6 incoming flights on the same baggage carousel even though there are 6 other baggage carousels that aren’t being used?

So I’ve been trying out the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) Eve Online.  After just 4 days I’m done.

I like the idea behind the kinds of games,  an online world with lots of other players and things to interact with, if nothing else it should give the average game more depth as the world itself is continually changing as players function in the online world and interact with it.  When you combine that with a developer staff that is continually working to keep the game fresh and interesting by adding new content and you should have a winner right?

If only it was that simple.  I first dabbled with an MMORPG several years ago with Star Wars Galaxies.  The promise sounded great, all the pieces of an MMORPG combined with creating a playable character in the Star Wars universe.  Within a few weeks I started loosing interest as i discovered the weekness of the MMORPG genre.

Every new player starts off pretty weak, they have very little supplies, little in game experience, and little in game finances.  Short of cheating there’s no way to get more skills, supplies or finances without participating in what is typically called “grinding.”  See to do all of those things you must either complete missions or harvest some sort of in game material which you can either sell or remanufacture into some sort of in game asset which you can sell.

It’s called grinding because your grinding away at these tasks.  Most missions in MMORPG typically boil down to “go here, kill this thing or things, come back and collect your reward,” or “take/bring this item to this location and collect your reward.”  While the actual location, item, or creature may change you’re still basically doing the same task over and over again.

Harvesting resources is just as bad - prospect for worthwhile resources, setup a harvestor, collect resources.  Repeat.  Then the junior player discovers the next problem - what to do with the resources.  You could sell them - except that more experienced players have advanced harvesters that are pulling in exponentially more resources than you and are probably selling significantly larger quantities of resources than you have or could even get in a month.  You could process your resources into an asset that you can sell - except that as a new player you either don’t have the skill to do so at all or don’t have the skill to create something that other people even want.  Getting that skill means grinding away for probably weeks or longer.

Some games have other issues on top of those.  Many MMORPGs have the “realm” running on multiple servers in order to load balance the game.  You only have contact with the folks who are on the same server as you.  In terms of overall game performance it’s great no single server gets slammed as users congregate in areas.  I was on Second Life for 15 minutes before I quit in frustration, the server just couldn’t handle that many people in the same part of the game.  Galaxies suffers from an opposite problem, since folks on different servers can’t mingle there are vast swaths of the game that are deserted.
I tried Eve Online in the hope that it would be different.  The storyline seemed compelling and from my reading it looked to be a different type of MMORPG.  Unfortunately once I got in and started playing I was quickly disappointed.  I was stunned by the amount of sameness throughout the entire game.  At least in the other MMORPGs different parts of the game looked different, if nothing else you could spend a significant amount of time just exploring the different regions of the game to offset the tedium of the grind.  Eve Online doesn’t even offer that, every single solar system is the same, there’s a handful of planets and asteroids plus a few space stations in every solor system - and that’s it.

$19.95 a month at least to me just isn’t worth the sameness that Eve Online offers.

I said this 18 months ago when the iPhone was first announced.  I thought it was all drool worthy - then I learned more and didn’t get one.  The wife did (a 4GB model after the price cut) and so did a few of my co-workers but I didn’t.

If my previous phone hadn’t gotten smashed when it did I might have bit the bullet last year - but when I needed a new phone last April the Treo 750 seemed the best of the smartphone lot.  Honestly I like the 750 a lot.  Initially it was extremely unstable and I ended up returning my first one, but my second one was better and upgrading it to Windows Mobile 6 helped a bit too.  However my 750 isn’t without it’s flaws, not the least of which is that it has the annoying ability to suffer random memory leaks - severe enough that I can actually watch the free memory tick away in the resources window.  The only way to stop it is to reboot - and the 750 is slow to reboot.  I could almost understand the memory leaks if I ran a lot of third party apps on my phone - but I don’t run any.

There were four things about the iPhone that made the decision to pull the trigger on the 750 easier:

• Locked to AT&T
• Can’t use it as a modem
• No voice dialing
• No 3G Data

The first one could actually be chalked up as an annoyance.  We do travel overseas and have pre-paid SIM cards for when we travel.  Since the iPhone is locked we can’t use it with our SIM cards - but we have several “retired” phones that are unlocked and work which could be used overseas if need be.  But still, if I didn’t have to swap phones I’d rather not.

The second one is a little bigger.  While I don’t do it often, it is nice to be able to tether my laptop to the 750 and use it to connect to the internet - especially where there’s 3G data service.  I don’t do it enough to justify getting an PCCard modem and plan, but for the few times a year when I’m on the road and there’s no free WiFi around it’s nice to have.

I think the voice dialing is also more annoyance than anything else.  I used to use it a lot with my bluetooth headset and my 750 but since I haven’t been using the headset lately I haven’t been using the voice dialing.

My big reasons for wanting 3G data is related to the second issue - in large part so I can tether my laptop and use the phone as a modem.  However it is exceedingly convenient to have a speedy internet connection in the palm of your hand.  One plus of the iPhone is the browsing experience - on the other hand while the 750 has a fast connection - Pocket Internet Explorer pretty much sucks.

Of my list - the only one for sure that’s going to be met with the new iPhone is 3G data.  There’s no word that any of my other issues have even been looked at.

But everyone I know who has an iPhone raves about it.  I’ve used The Wife’s iPhone and it’s not bad.  The screen is gorgeous, the sound is good, and it synchs with iTunes - the 750 can play music well, but doesn’t synch with iTunes.  Heck except for 3 of the four issues above - the iPhone does everything I want in a phone.

So, do I make the switch or not?

Well it seems like we may be on the start of a fitness kick here.

We’d been eying the WiiFit since it was first announced last year - and managed to get the last one at our local Toys R Us yesterday.  I won’t talk about the results other than to say that we have really bad balance according to the WiiFit.  I’m not sure I agree with that pronouncement but whatever.  We’ve only had it for two days, and so far we’ve kept up with it.

Shortly afterward we also both purchased bikes and a bike rack to along with them.  Ever since we lived in Virginia we’ve talked about getting bikes and trying to get out and ride together, but it had never passed beyond the talking phase.  Back in April The Boy got his first Big Boy bicycle which he loves, but we really don’t have a lot of space for him to ride around and that was an incentive to get us moving on that front so we could ride with him.

I took The Boy to our local elementary school to try out this plan, and discovered the one fatal flaw - The Boy rides his bike at a much slower pace than I do…  Hopefully this is something that we’ll be able to work out, but it could put a crimp in our plans to have family rides this summer.